Haim Lev – The Champion’s Story (Tonight, 22:35, Channel 1)
Enabling a sane perspective on a harsh life.
Addictive and heartfelt.
Merav Yudilowich: YNET
Allow my political incorrectness, for a minute, to say that the last thing I feel like watching in such times of blood-filled occurrences, is a sad film on someone else’s troubles. But whoever makes it through the first few minutes of Tzvika Vloch’s film “Haim Lev – A World Champion’s Story” is likely to watch it to the end, while gaining an interesting perspective of a sane and unspoiled life through the eyes of Haim Lev, a member of the Israeli national team of tennis for the disabled.
Haim Lev’s life story is made of the materials that make soap operas so successful, and the film highlights the right spots – those that will make you go along with the story, once in, from start to end.
Lev was born a healthy baby, but after a relatively simple back surgery when a teenager, he became paralyzed in three limbs and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Vloch follows Lev for two years, focusing on two parallel aspects: One – Lev’s participation in the tennis world cup tournament for the disabled; the other – his love for Sharon Bitton, a beautiful healthy girl who falls in love with him to her parents dismay. Vloch accompanies Lev to the court, in his preparations for the Nations’ Cup in New York, goes out with him and Sharon to nightclubs and stays home with them, and hears from the both of them how they cope with her parents’ disapproval of their liaison.
The film is not clean of directing and editing manipulations and effects, but all-in-all it depicts the tale of a genuine confrontation with hardships and prejudice, as well as with the actual disability.
A bit like Forrest Gump, Haim Lev teaches the viewer something about the capacity to love from an unambiguous and non-judgmental place, in a way that makes the loving person into a happier one.
Since this soap opera is, above all, real, we will excuse directorial slips and appreciate the right choice of story and heroes. In life, as in “The Champion”, victory is often accompanied by disillusionment. Although on the face of it it’s a complex and touchy issue, Vloch’s film is optimistic and Channel 1’s decision to place it in a weekly strip is welcome. It’s worth checking out.
